


Bambi

by Bidawee



Series: if you go down in the woods today (fantasy au) [2]
Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Abandonment, Alternate Universe - Shapeshifters, Deer, Dubious Consent, Fantasy, Friends to Lovers, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Minor Character Death, Rape/Non-con Elements, Shapeshifting, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-04
Updated: 2018-07-04
Packaged: 2019-06-05 00:19:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15158330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bidawee/pseuds/Bidawee
Summary: See the shifter gaily gad about, a doe that loves to play and shout, he never has any cares.





	Bambi

**Author's Note:**

> Not proofed, beware! More extensive warnings are in the end notes.  
> Lots of love given to my dear Jiggy, who proposed the idea. I had so much fun writing this and I adore this universe. I'm hoping I can write more later.  
> For the record, I know doe are female deer, but for the sake of this story it's a broad term. Same with buck. A woman can be a buck and a man can be a doe; it's a change in anatomy only (horns or no horns).

He’s told he cried loudly when the midwife pulled him from his mother, and that was the indicator that he was not human. No, when the village elder entered their tent, she heard the voice of the forest in his throat. Something foreign and concocted only in the depths of brambles and thorns. A creature of the earth; a shapeshifter. The baby was a soon to be chrysalis, now only larvae, but ready to become the pupa and soon, a parasite. His birth was a crime because it was expected he would be one of them and would mutate and call the spirits to curse their homes.

Mother was one too, bound by her culture more than her appearance. It outs her more than any horns or pointed ears could, and she leaves with him in her arms, his body no longer swaddled by cloth. His father turns his nose up when he sees the remains of his son and doesn’t hold him once in his lifetime, looking on with disdain as they trudge to the wilds with shame painting their faces in dirty streaks.

Their first summer becomes a testament to opening his eyes and waddling; finding an animal to take host in. There are many other blessed forest children like Mitch who take monstrous forms and beasts of many kinds, some inherited. His mother is a deer and he believes he should be as well, as the deer is most deserving of nature’s bounty.

It’s hard to walk as a forest dweller, but harder as a human. The earth is unforgiving and lumpy. The twigs hurt when they dig into his feet. The other children look at him oddly and it’s lonely without other humans. It’s nice to prance in the trees and practice jumping the brook, though mother tells him to be home by sundown or assume the worst. Hunters of the magical and animal kind are always on the prowl.

 

The leaves fall in a rainbow of colours and they crunch under his hooves, startling a laugh out of him. They are wet from rainfall, but still, sway when they are thrown. He likes to toss them and jump out onto the piles. He likes the increase in traffic as many animals prepare to hibernate or gather together stores of food.

It’s normal to see mice or other rodents scurrying around in the leaves, but the shape that appears in front of him is entirely too large. When it reveals itself, it’s a deer, like him, but more hardened. A human with a buck appearance, if the horns are any indication. He gapes on, expecting someone entirely different, and shrinks back against the colourful foliage like pressed grass.

“Hi,” he introduces himself. “I’m Mitch.” The buck blinks with big, cow-like eyes, assessing the situation. Mitch stands tall, but not to overcompensate. He likes the friendly, more well-rounded looks his doe genetics give him, because he can fluff up and still look ready to cuddle in the undergrowth.

“I’m Auston,” the buck says, finally. Not only does he find his voice, but the courage to knock the hair out of his face and walk closer. “Wanna play?”

It takes an afternoon to find out that Auston is good at wrestling, but not at running, meaning Mitch can run circles as the poor thing pants his lungs out. Even wrestling isn’t a discernable advantage for long though, because once he knows Auston has ticklish sides it’s easy to flip him over and win. Auston isn’t happy, but he licks Mitch’s cheek and scampers with him and promises to come back to chase him tomorrow.

His mother is delighted that he finally found a folk of the forest to love and bond with, scratching behind his ears, both doe and boy, as she drones on about the new diet and other deer that graze in the western meadow and prance in their own makeshift herds. He does not understand most of her babble but does not pipe up until she tugs too hard on his tail as she’s shaping the baby fur there.

Mitch is just happy there’s someone else like him, albeit just as small and lumpy, Auston hasn’t learned how to walk correctly as a buck, but as a human, he can throw leaves and pick cloves. Clovers he subsequently found disgusting and pawned off on Mitch, which is a crime because no greenery beats the texture and mesh of the bulbs when swallowed. In turn, Mitch roots through his findings and pass off the dandelions, which Auston goes on a long-winded, silly speech about how they slide down his tongue like honey.

He supposes they balance each other out because a look at them is enough to make him buckle.

 

Snow tickles his nose and its cold like the human’s stone path in the morning. At first, it does no more than making him sneeze, but then comes the change in temperature and the lakes freezing over. The roots and branches of the pine trees become brittle and scatter, the lack of moisture for once not their murderer. As the forest experiences pangs of hunger, wolves and coyotes fight for scraps and it becomes disturbingly apparent that the wonderland he appreciated in his first months was but a facade.

He shivers so much his thighs become sore and his mother is growing pale in the face. She knows not how to keep a child warm without the hearth of a fire, so she pleads with him to become a doe and wraps the remains of her clothing around him. He’s hungry, he wants to eat, but nothing grows through the sheets of snow that stripe the forest floor. The cold is no wonder, it is a killer.

They leave the burrow once every few days to scavenge and find a suitable drinking source, on the way stumbling onto Auston and his father. Auston as a buck is scrawny, his legs much too long for his stumpy little head and tail. He falls over when Mitch jumps and there’s a joy in his eyes that makes Mitch squeal.

Once in a blue moon, Auston will skip over and nest with him and his mother because human activity is too frantic around his own nest. There’s unbridled fear saddled in the eyes of his father, forking over his son and looking at Mitch like he would his own, mourning the way the doe heaves and sputters, stomach growling.

The human hunters are relentless and have new improvisational weaponry that kills them in a single screech. It comes in tall tales and stories of all kind, but he first comes across it in the flesh when he’s startled awake one evening, Auston at the entrance of the burrow drenched in a cold sweat. He tells Mitch’s mother that his father disappeared into the brush and he was woken by the thunder of the humans and their bloodstained hands.

He’s an orphan now, but the wild is cruel and has no sympathy for a lost child, even one so unfortunate. Mitch watches his mother turn Auston away, sniffing at the mix of scents that are not hers. Auston still tries to squeeze by her and into the burrow to hide behind Mitch, but she shoves him out and guards the entrance with her lip curled. After two more attempts, he accepts his defeat and follows through on her brutish orders.

In the dead of night, Mitch finds it in himself to walk the walk down the icy fields to where Auston’s burrow is. Mitch's mother has begun to separate herself from him as he matures, so it’s easy to melt away and into the open-ended grass. After all, he knows she wants to be human again, and that he is a reminder of the life she has been banished to. He prefers she cry when he’s not in the burrow because then he can sleep without thinking about the future.

Auston is grateful. The next spring, he comes with a handful of clovers, as much as he can carry, and showers Mitch in them.

 

He almost trips over the canary-yellow flora and has a close call with the King of the Forest, who gets faster with every season, muscles developing after many large meals he has consumed. A doe behind Mitch loses his life and only when he is back in the burrow does he allow himself to exhale. The tortured screams wail behind him as the wolf drags his kill away.

Auston finds him there and shushes him, ducking inside Mitch's burrow to keep him company. He is beginning to shapen up and eclipses the sun when he kneels in the entrance, flinching when the loose branches Mitch’d woven in smack his forehead.

“You mustn’t run by yourself. It’s too dangerous,” Auston chides, goading Mitch in and with two gentle strokes, flattens his hair.

“Your herd is too slow,” Mitch reminds him, kicking his legs out. He will have to expand the burrow soon to make room for himself as he grows. Auston sweeps aside a few twigs to help with the cleaning effort.

Auston touches the apple of his cheek with his nose. It is warm. “Let me keep you safe. I know how to fight.” His hands creep up his bare back and hold him steady.

Mitch snorts, “fight? A buck like you? How absurd.” Judging by his flinch, Auston does not take lightly to his backhanded insult and tries to wrestle him, right in his own den. Had his mother still nested beside him, she would’ve thrown a fit.

Mitch is an old hand at this game and Auston folds, but not as easy as before. His strength is formidable now and he sees what his friend is trying to convey. Regardless, it does not justify how a dweller at the bottom of the food chain should be fighting with tusks and horns against the natural order. It will only get him killed, much like his father.

“I tire of being weak,” Auston says, once Mitch has flopped off of him. “I yearn for claws and fangs and the ability to run without looking back. To be a deer is to loathe.”

“Do you loathe me?” Because Mitch and doe are hard to separate now. He uses both forms and does not hide. Auston has begun to revert to human form now. Mitch sparsely sees him graze anymore. Auston’s prickly exterior cools then and there, preferring to return back to priming Mitch's hair in thin little columns.

Still, he thinks, Auston whines and snorts and that's as much deer as any woodland creature Mitch has come by, so he forks over his supply of food, bountiful with the change of seasons, and lays to rest. Auston nudges Mitch aside to make room for himself and huddles close, because the dew is fresh and a chill is in the air, and the forest was not grown for the weak and runts to survive in.

 

Mitch's mother begins to walk by the village grounds again as she continues to coldly separate herself from him, living quarters aside. It's because he has a brother, a human one that she covets, more so than him. Because he is human.

“His name is Chris,” she tells him, later, once she's committed to a patch of sour berries by the brook. It's the only place he sees her anymore without fail. “He's strong and hardy. Can work the earth.”

Working the earth is not a synonym for farming, as was instilled in him not long after the topic of humans came up. The forest workers are the ones that uproot their beautiful forest to make room for humans and slather false stones and dirt on the natural paths. He despises them because they were the cause for a fire only days prior that threatened to explode out of control and force him from his burrow, which was his grandmother’s. He despises them because they kill even when it is not necessary because they shoot and kill. Because deep down, he is not them, and his only family wishes he was.

Mother points him out to Mitch one day because in a moment of weakness she desires her human life back and wishes to walk the salt of the earth as not a doe or buck, but a woman. They walk two miles or so in their hooves to the establishment where humans live on an old beaver burial ground and do not know it (it saddens him that they have such a disinterest for tradition like the spiritual folk did before they conquered their homes, so if he must die, he would prefer his life go with meaning). Unlike animals, they co-exist as one and populate bigger, freestanding burrows and cave systems made of wood and stone.

At the bosom of the town, near the well where mother says they dig up fresh water, they are using their wide blades to cut down the trees. Mitch’s mother steps out, hesitantly, like a water vole when the ice is thin. Many of the adolescent men run when they recognize her weighed gait and the way flowers bloom in her wake; something supernatural and of legend. Something that does not belong.

Luckily, Chris falters but does not bend. His mother meets him halfway and embraces him like she would an old friend, choking out her sadness as her hands form a skin-tight barrier around his torso and hold on for dear life. She weeps, because he is the son she did not raise and never will.

Mitch swears he hears pitchforks in the forest but it does not matter. The disgust in his brother’s eyes when he looks at him is enough to send him running.

 

Seasons are changing and the heat is evading him; Mitch can no longer sunbathe on the rocks or chew the wheat stalks without repercussion or chill. Winter comes with the sprint of an animal and he already sees it turning the bend, so he prepares. It comes at a great cost to his leisure time, as now his soles hurt and there is dirt crusted under his fingernails.

He’s weaving more flowers and pretty charms into the roof of his burrow when Auston limps up and into his personal space with a grunt. The difference is that his face is smeared with cherry-red globs of thick, stinking blood. And it’s his blood, if the cuts above his eyebrow are any indication. Mitch shrieks and rushes to his aide, tugging him deeper inside the shielded nest and pressing his hands to the multiple cuts and bruises to stop the worst of the bleeding.

Auston is strangely undisturbed and placated, sitting back with his head in Mitch’s lap, fingers circling the birthmark on his upper thigh. Mitch is pressing leaves and spit-soaked herbs and herbal remedies hoping the initial sting will bring lasting health. Truth is, he knows very little, and it scares him.

“It was a bear,” Auston explains, minutes later. “It lunged and snarled, but now that I’ve grown in my horns they are of no threat to me.”

“You must be careful,” Mitch says, smoothing down his hair like Auston would when he was a child. “You are just a buck.”

Later, Mitch braids daisies into the ruffled locks, because not only does he have a surplus but Auston loves watching with lidded eyes. The white petals look so pretty mixed in with the dark tufts of hair, and it's thick enough to hold. Mitch weaves little crowns and ceremonial necklaces and throws them over Auston, wishing him good fortune. Auston, bloodied and victorious, sniffs at the intruding articles but does not respond, one arm curling over Mitch’s thighs to hold him so he cannot get up and leave him.

 

Winter is bitter and surely on the horizon. Food becomes scarce, predators stop taking the shape of animals and become the wind, sky, and earth that saps heat from his body and bites at his skin until it resembles gooseflesh. He spends more and more time as a doe, as his fur coat can protect him in ways a human body cannot, but it makes little difference. He still has to curl up in the fetal position and reinforce the walls of the burrow to keep the worst of it out.

The King’s hunting changes course, no longer nocturnal. He is becoming restless, and though Mitch is grateful he lacks the numbers in family to be a lethal threat, he does not underestimate him as the beast snaps at his heels and chants olden melodies to the moon at night to liven his spirits. However, the pasture around the monster's den is the sweetest, so he teases fate once or twice when the sun is in the sky to get a taste.

Auston pays him a visit, winter coat evident and hunting supplies slung over one shoulder. Ever since he began spending more time as a human his appetite began to lean more towards meat, despite his buck nature. It’s so unnatural and bizarre but Mitch doesn’t have the heart to call him out on it. He much enjoys the clovers so to each their own, he supposes.

He approaches Mitch with a timidness not seen in years, hand held out hesitantly as his shaky pupils tried to discern his reaction.

“Come with me,” Auston says, the winter winds howling behind him. “Let us find better land and a new home for us and the generations to come.”

“I cannot,” Mitch replies, “for I cannot fight like you. I love the greenery and the meadows and the animals. I have no right to complain.” And Auston is disturbed at the speech, appalled by Mitch’s attraction, but does not fight him. He leaves with his tail between his legs and does not return until the trees begin to bud again.

 

Auston comes back when Mitch is tending the spring garden, and he has sprouted feet in length to where he is now filled out and ginormous. His horns now protrude noticeably and there are scars checkering his shoulders and back. His hair has grown out too, though not enough to cover his forehead.

He says nothing for a great deal of time; watches Mitch sweep across the flowers with a grace he lacks and knocks the flies away with his hands. When Mitch tires of the game, he looks up.

“Yes?” he asks.

“I have come home,” Auston says, “for you.” And though Mitch is happy to see his childhood friend, Auston comes with a hint of disdain and much trepidation. He watches Mitch and bares his teeth when other animals, whether they be magical or not, come close.

Auston is not known for his ability to wait and watch forever. He draws closer every time the clouds hide the sun as if it will hide his advances. He moves slowly, until he is pressed up, mouth to Mitch’s neck and scenting the daisies Mitch had been sleeping in earlier.

Mitch’s first instinct is to run, and it serves him well. He makes it out before Auston gets a firm grip on the reality at hand and even though he eventually make chase, Mitch is faster and fed on the will to race the birds with each stride. He loses Auston by the brook where they first met and hears his frustrated gruffs as he tries to track down Mitch.

He’s squished to the ground and shaking when Auston passes him by. He is a buck but no hound; he cannot sniff him out. Auston is flushed, leg jumping, and Mitch prays he will leave and find better company. He does not. There are clovers in his right hand. His eyes are trained on the rocky shield where Mitch loves to jump and twirl. He knows his friend too well.

Mitch's burrow becomes Auston’s post. He stands like a guard and watches. Auston knows he cannot catch Mitch by speed alone, so he must use his environment to garner control of the situation. Watching him patrol back and forth on edge, ears perked for signs of Mitch has him shaking as he makes a makeshift nest in the autumn leaves remaining after the frost, not nearly as comfortable as his generational home.

Mitch has to come back because there are things he cannot afford to leave behind. Auston almost grabs him a second time, but the third time's the charm. He’s sent back to their sessions of play fighting in the grasslands as children, how he was slippery enough to get out from Auston and hold him between his shoulder blades. It proves fruitless now; Auston is too seasoned a fighter.

He’d wanted to stay acquaintances forever, but it might’ve been too much to ask. Everything changes too quickly and soon he is pinned and his nose is smudging the dirt and twigs as Auston spreads his legs for him. His mother and friends tell him he should be honoured such a willing mate sought him out and took on all opposition to woo him, but sitting in the back of his burrow with Auston obscuring the entrance, only then tired out from his pursuit which lasted for hours beyond the initial meeting, Mitch only feels a hollowness.

 

Summer that year is blistering, the trees bending and melting as the sun beats down on them. He is not with fawn, but Auston treats him as such and spends hours grooming him and expecting the same from his new mate. His mother would call it an exchange of love and happiness, bond-setting, but he is emotionless as he combs the tangles out of Auston’s hair with one hand. He doesn’t bother with daisies or clover or any woodland wildflowers anymore, for they do not bring him joy.

When it gets too hot to leave the nest without sweating, Auston brings him water and greens to munch on in his spare time; Mitch’s burrow is becoming his burrow now too. If Mitch closes his eyes, he can almost pretend they are still friends when Auston presses the leaves to his mouth and forces him to chew. He is being difficult, but he did not imagine life would occur as such.

The forest is pleased and brimming with life, much more than usual. Mitch swears he can see a new face at the mouth of the King’s lair, just as reddened and freckled as the wolf himself. It means the King is hunting more but, ironically, is also more docile and calm. He finally has another mouth to feed but one much more human. Mitch has no idea if the thing can shapeshift yet, but sees him flee once or twice only to be brought back on the wolf’s haunches each time.

He thinks Auston would do the same, only he knows better. It is nature; it is how the earth develops. They are playing their part. He just wishes he felt something more tangible when Auston would lay with him.

He knows Auston loves him, but it is not reciprocated.

Why, he knows not, because Auston is kind and giving. He is not selfish like how he has seen some bucks in the wilds before; ones that fancied him before Auston chased him off into the brush. He could see himself loving Auston someday with all the adoration mates can donate onto their own.

Bitterness roots inside of him because he wants to stay a free creature longer and experience the wilds more before he is tied down and looking from the inside out, wanting to be like the young he can hear singing in the forest. Sure, his legs fold when he sits and there’s a noticeable lump in his throat, but when he runs and dances with the leaves, it’s like he never grew up. He pretends he never did.

 

“I do hate the herds, but I desire to keep you safe. We can find a bigger burrow and live in peace,” Auston tells him, in the midst of an argument where their breath is visible and cold against their faces, cheeks burning.

And he does not want to go, because the ceiling made of birch and pine is his home. Paths to the childhood landmarks and abandoned nurseries he’s traced many times over that would become obsolete should he leave.

But in his marrow, he knows Auston is right. There is nothing here and that does not apply solely to the winter’s bane. Because the morning before his mother had finally dropped dead and became one with the earth. Besides Auston, she was the only face he could recognize that had meaning and foreclosure.

He always imagined she would grow more wrinkles and become weary, falling into an eternal slumber one day when he had arranged a nice service to remember her by. That is how every creature likes to imagine their loved ones go. Frankly, it is commonly the opposite.

Rather, he sees her chest and ribcage torn open by a pack of coyotes, ones too rabid with malnourishment to see straight, and attacking even when she was in human form. Mitch was at the top of the hill when she first dropped to her knees and bawled for his assistance, and in his panic, he retrieved Auston from the hunt.

He retraces his steps, finds where she was still fighting for her life, and could only stand by, a victim to his tone but wobbly legs as Auston shakes his head and shoves him back.

“I cannot risk it hurting you,” he says, as the horned silhouette brawls the fangs against the rock and cedar in the distance, gurgling noises as blood escapes in a cascade all the more fierce because of the multitude of coyotes tossing their heads back to break her bones.

“She will die!” Mitch cries, like a fawn himself. For how little she loved him in the latter days, he could not watch such a fate. He’d rather Auston speared her and put her out of her misery before any more harm could come to her.

“It’s her time.” Auston pushes him back into the burrow, threatening to use his horns.

He knows they will stab into his skin and piece the veins, so he bows to his mate’s commands and flattens himself until his belly touches the soil. Auston slides in beside him and draped on top of him like a mossy blanket, using his body to hide Mitch under his muscle mass, waiting out the threat to the metronome of her screams.

In her final seconds, Mitch imagines he should traverse the path and find Chris. Even if his brother despises him and what he represents, she was still his mother. But Chris is not a brother, his father is not a father, his mother is dead, and his mate is hauling him back, towards a new future where there will be plentiful food and a new life to begin.

He reminds himself there is nothing left.

So he takes Auston’s hand, accepts the rations that are protein and not the nutrients he devours, and says goodbye to home in a single cry and the loss of a tear at the final glimpse of his cold, dark, torn-up hollow. Which in truth, was never really a home so much as it was a prison.

 

**Author's Note:**

> A character is pressured into sexual content but does not verbally refuse; mainly wishes to remain friends but does not object. There is social pressure compelling him and he accepts the courtship because it's convenient. It is not non-con.  
> come talk to me @cursivecherrypicking on tumblr!


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